Rand Paul presidential hopeful and shameless plagiarist?

D

Dubyamn

I don't know if any of you have been following the small story that keeps on getting worse and worse for Presidential hopeful and all around terrible person Rand Paul where it began with him being caught quoting directly from Wikipedia about the plot to the movie Gattaca and now has shown that he took whole passages from heritage foundation reports and put them directly into his book.

Rand Paul as his defense has taken a fairly odd tack laughing that he has never claimed that he wrote Gattaca so obviously he isn't a plagiarist and that he wishes he could challege all the "haters" to a duel.

Is this a big deal now adays? When a guy who is considered to be a rising star in the GOP and a definite contender in the next GOP presidential primary season can lift whole sections of other peoples words and pass them off as the result of his own knowledge on the situation. Should this be a bigger story?

New York Times article on it

Buzzfeed article on some of the plagiarism

Racheal Maddow's original video on the palgiarism
 
Tress

Tress

Given all the other things to criticize Rand Paul for, this just doesn't rank high enough on my list.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Dubyamn said:
You're right I should have mentioned the fact that Biden's plagiarism scandal destroyed his presidential bid and probably kept him from mounting a presidential bid again.
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So Paul is still in the running for Veep then? Cruz/Paul 2016?
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
It's very difficult to footnote speeches. Personally, I think if someone uses someone else's words in a speech it's not as big of a deal, Rand Paul included. I mean, he was explaining something and used words directly from Wikipedia. *yawn* So what? As long as he wasn't doing it for money (as in a fee for speaking, not a campaign speech) or saying that he wrote the words, I don't see the big issue.

Sometimes others say things better than I could myself, and if I got the information from Wikipedia it would be very difficult to attribute.
 
Covar

Covar

Dave said:
It's very difficult to footnote speeches. Personally, I think if someone uses someone else's words in a speech it's not as big of a deal, Rand Paul included. I mean, he was explaining something and used words directly from Wikipedia. *yawn* So what? As long as he wasn't doing it for money (as in a fee for speaking, not a campaign speech) or saying that he wrote the words, I don't see the big issue.

Sometimes others say things better than I could myself, and if I got the information from Wikipedia it would be very difficult to attribute.
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Stop being reasonable, everyone knows you can't quote from wikipedia a summary of another work without including attribution to wikipedia, and the citation or citation needed of each sentence of the wikipedia article itself.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Yeah this is a case of the left acting like alarmist morons. Looks like the pendulum is swinging back.
 
D

Dubyamn

Dave said:
It's very difficult to footnote speeches. Personally, I think if someone uses someone else's words in a speech it's not as big of a deal, Rand Paul included. I mean, he was explaining something and used words directly from Wikipedia. *yawn* So what? As long as he wasn't doing it for money (as in a fee for speaking, not a campaign speech) or saying that he wrote the words, I don't see the big issue.
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Not really. You can say "According to wikipedia" or even "The movie blurb says" and you've just effectively and honestly "footnoted" your speech.

And even beyond that did you just pass over the fact that the book he wrote and sold took unattributed passages from Heritage foundation reports and passed them off as Rand Paul's own words?

Sometimes others say things better than I could myself, and if I got the information from Wikipedia it would be very difficult to attribute.
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Not really. You would just say "I read on Wikipedia" and you're done. If somebody explains something better than you then you have to acknowledge that they did in fact say it and that you didn't come up with it on your own. I mean hell I always feel vaguely embarassed when I quote somebody in everyday conversation and people think I came up with it.

I mean maybe it's my background but from grade school on it has been instilled in me that Plagiarism is every bit as bad as lying, cheating and stealing. My class president was kicked out for Plagiarism a good friend in college was expelled for plagiarism and I've always known that in my job any plagiarism is enough to be fired pretty much on the spot. I mean if nobody thinks that a possible presidential candidate plagiarizing and refusing to admit it isn't a problem then I guess I can accept that. But it literally shocks me.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
I didn't know about the book and that's bad. But speeches? I could hardly care less. I know that's a double standard of a kind, but there it is.
 
Tress

Tress

GasBandit said:
You wouldn't know conservatism if it snuck up and bit you on the ass.
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Oh, the king of whining about ad hom attacks leveling one against Dave? How perfect. Remember this next time you dismiss someone else's comments for doing the exact same thing.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
John McCain wasn't the crazy idiot on that ticket, as well you know. But he was a different person before he got the nomination, after he'd gotten it, and after he'd lost the campaign. Before and after the campaign, McCain was not afraid to be his own man and talk against the hardline right of the party. But during the campaign, he toed the party line strictly and without argument.

So you can use him as the only one that might seem palatable to the majority of the country, but even he went WAY right when he felt he had to to kowtow to his idiot base of rednecks and illiterate racists.

See? I can be needlessly insulting, too!
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Tress said:
Oh, the king of whining about ad hom attacks leveling one against Dave? How perfect. Remember this next time you dismiss someone else's comments for doing the exact same thing.
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To be fair, I also used to be the king of ad hom. But that was a long time ago.
Dave said:
John McCain wasn't the crazy idiot on that ticket, as well you know. But he was a different person before he got the nomination, after he'd gotten it, and after he'd lost the campaign. Before and after the campaign, McCain was not afraid to be his own man and talk against the hardline right of the party. But during the campaign, he toed the party line strictly and without argument.

So you can use him as the only one that might seem palatable to the majority of the country, but even he went WAY right when he felt he had to to kowtow to his idiot base of rednecks and illiterate racists.

See? I can be needlessly insulting, too!
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Oh I haven't even BEGUN to get needlessly insulting. You know I'd be just itching for that kind of thread, don't you?

Yes, McCain pretended to move to the right, but he didn't fool anybody. That's why he pulled Palin out of Alaska to be his running mate, because absolutely nobody was enthused about his ticket because he was, and is, practically as much Democrat as Republican. But the media, oh how they vilified. Oh how they slandered. Oh how they kicked their once-and-future favorite Republican to the curb and painted him as a right wing fascist even though they knew better themselves.

And even Romney wasn't all that conservative. He was, after all, the grandfather of Obamacare. He was just rich, which is something socialists equate with conservative automatically, despite that wealth just as common on any side of whichever aisle.

The point is, Republicans will continue to be demonized as baby-eating monsters no matter who their nominee is. They should just go ahead and nominate whoever scares the media the worst - then at least our continual, steady descent into ruin will have entertaining prime time TV, since it's already a foregone conclusion that we're locked on the tracks toward forced Libertarianism via bankruptcy.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

GasBandit said:
And even Romney wasn't all that conservative. He was, after all, the grandfather of Obamacare. He was just rich, which is something socialists equate with conservative automatically, despite that wealth just as common on any side of whichever aisle.
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No... we equate being rich with being out of touch with the daily reality of a majority of the population. He pretty much proved that point with his 47% percent comment that basically cost him the election. People don't hate people for being rich... it's just that rich people tend to be assholes about everything because they can get away with it.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
AshburnerX said:
No... we equate being rich with being out of touch with the daily reality of a majority of the population. He pretty much proved that point with his 47% percent comment that basically cost him the election. People don't hate people for being rich... it's just that rich people tend to be assholes about everything because they can get away with it.
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"Rich Republicans" and "Republicans only care about the rich" are such common invective that they're practically trite. By comparison, hardly anyone grouses about those "damn rich Democrats," despite that there's just as many of them.
 
Covar

Covar

You know 47% of the country was not going to vote for him regardless and he shouldn't have wasted time and money campaigning to them. It's amazing how that comment was made to sound like the nastiest, most disgusting comment ever uttered from the mouth of a political candidate. Then again most the outrage was from the very 47% percent of people who would never even consider voting for him (although people love to tell themselves and others that they consider all cannidates) so it's not too surprising.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
The more I read about this the more I think it was a bad thing, but only in his books and paid appearances. I still don't give two shits about his stump speeches lifting from other places.
 
strawman

strawman

While this plagiarism is pretty overt, one need only search the internet for "[politician] plagiarism" to find how nearly every other prominent politician has either plagiarized or been accused of it. There's a funny article on the comparison of Obamas Syria speech and bushs speech on making the case for the Iraq war.

Obama seems more adept at altering the content slightly so it's not a direct lift, for instance, whereas Ryan's appears to be a much lazier form of plagiarism.

But if you go back to state of the union addresses and you find many more "similarities" than you see differences from leader to leader.

In academia and research plagiarism is anathema because your total worth is your ideas, and when someone steals one, they are taking a part of you and presenting that part of you as belonging to themselves. Their worth increases due to your ability.

But in most other careers plagiarism is used to communicate, and isn't necessarily associated with one's worth.

Don't get me wrong, plagiarism isn't acceptable, particularly such overt verbatim plagiarism, but it's a means to an end and not value in and of itself.

While one can do the research themselves, and pull together the right words to convey a thought, concept, or convincing argument, if someone else has done the work then the point is to get the idea across, then build on that.

When information is used from elsewhere one should certainly footnote it. It's wrong not to do so. But it doesn't reflect as badly on ones character as it does in research and academia.
 
D

Dubyamn

GasBandit said:
"Rich Republicans" and "Republicans only care about the rich" are such common invective that they're practically trite. By comparison, hardly anyone grouses about those "damn rich Democrats," despite that there's just as many of them.
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Gotta admit I've never actually heard anybody complaining about the "rich republicans." That they only care about the rich yes because it is fairly obvious that they really don't care about the poor and middle class.

Romney mostly got screwed by refusing to separate what he would do as president from what the official Republican campaign platform which was cartoonishly evil.

He also had this terrible tendency of during interviews and everything when he was talking off the cuff to say things that were reasonable, well thought out and centrist only to have his campaign "correct the remarks" later saying he actually meant the exact opposite. I mean it was very obvious that Romney wasn't a true believer and one his own would be pretty reasonable. Just as a president you would have no idea if anything he would say or if he would follow through with any of his plans or initiatives.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Dubyamn said:
Gotta admit I've never actually heard anybody complaining about the "rich republicans." That they only care about the rich yes because it is fairly obvious that they really don't care about the poor and middle class.
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Man, I can never seem to go a week without hearing it.

Romney mostly got screwed by refusing to separate what he would do as president from what the official Republican campaign platform which was cartoonishly evil.
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As opposed to Democrat campaign platforms which are cartoonishly good(as in, only work in fiction)?

I mean it was very obvious that Romney wasn't a true believer and one his own would be pretty reasonable. Just as a president you would have no idea if anything he would say or if he would follow through with any of his plans or initiatives.
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The same could be said for a lot... well, most politicians, especially in the presidential races.
 
D

Dubyamn

GasBandit said:
Man, I can never seem to go a week without hearing it.
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Then it should be easy to provide sources.

As opposed to Democrat campaign platforms which are cartoonishly good(as in, only work in fiction)?
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Which part specifically?

The same could be said for a lot... well, most politicians, especially in the presidential races.
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Yeah but there was a week straight of it happening to everything Romney said and not just clarification.

Stuff like "I don't support Employer's being able to determine healthcare coverage based soley on religious beliefs" Romney

"The candidate absolutely supports the right of employers to determine healthcare coeverage based on religious beliefs.
 
drawn_inward

drawn_inward

AshburnerX said:
People don't hate people for being rich... it's just that rich people tend to be assholes about everything because they can get away with it.
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I don't know about you, but I know plenty of poor assholes. I don't look up to rich folk as a general rule, but I do look up to folks that build themselves up from scratch. Poor to rich or at least better than their parents.

Also, folks who are poor and don't help others don't usually become super-philanthropists just because they become rich.

That being said, it is unfortunate the politics is a rich man/woman's game. A poor guy with good ideas doesn't have a chance (usually).
 
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